


i'll shoulder the load and i'll swallow the shame

by nightmaresinwintah



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Be Wary?, Bucky!Captain America, Distress, FUCK, HYDRA are assholes, I'm so sorry for this, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lots Of Sad, M/M, Multi, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recovery, Sam!Captain America, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve-Central, Torture, Violence, mind wipe, okay so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9434978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightmaresinwintah/pseuds/nightmaresinwintah
Summary: “Who are you?” Bucky asks.Who is he? He doesn’t know. Why doesn’t Bucky know, if they’ve brought him here? He thought they knew him as Steve. He scowls at the blanket, furious with how his head is reeling. He knows this question. “Nothing,” he replies. He is nothing.There is silence from Bucky for a long moment, like Bucky is gathering himself to ask another question. “Do you have a name?” comes next.“You called me Steve,” he replies, nails digging into his palms from where his hands have clenched.After Civil War, after Bucky has had his time to begin recovering, to come home, Steve gets captured by HYDRA. Nine months he's with them. It takes nine months for Sam and Bucky and the other Avengers to get him back and when they do, the person they recover is barely a person at all.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry for this. I don't know how it happened. There will be three parts. Explanations for the warnings are in the end notes. Please tread carefully? Read the warnings! Also there's a part in here where it switches to Sam's POV that will be signaled by a <> at the beginning and then a <> when it switches back to Steve's. Also the conclusions that Steve comes to about Bucky and Sam are fucked up and not at all correct okay? Okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings for Part One**  
>  \- implied and brief recollection of rape/non-con  
> \- mind-wipe  
> \- implied and brief recollection of torture  
> \- steve making assumptions of people he used to know that aren't very nice at all  
> \- steve thinking what's been done to him isn't bad

They won’t tell him anything, not that he’s spoken to ask. He’s in some sort of cell, wrists cuffed to the table in front of him. There is a blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders, though, so he figures it’s more precaution. His hair is hanging in front of his face as he stares down at the wool. He’s not shaking anymore, but there is comfort in the warmth. The tears, too, have stopped, but no matter the people coming in and out of the room he won’t look up. 

They call him Steve, ask him questions he doesn’t know, tell him things they expect he will react too. A woman with red hair is sitting across from him now, staring at him. He doesn’t dare look at her, knows that the blankness of her expression will be something that makes his brain twist, like he should recognise it. 

She had come in, greeted him as Steve, told him they knew each other. He doesn’t know her voice. He doesn’t know her footsteps, faint as they were. He doesn’t know the answers to her questions. He stares at the woolen blanket and wonders how easily he can break out of these cuffs. 

The people here aren’t cruel to him. They know him. They had cleaned up his wounds, strapped his ribs like they cared if they healed right. He had remained motionless, silent, blank; just as he had been taught. They had asked if he remembered  _ anything.  _ His answer had been a slow blink - he won’t talk. He  _ won’t.  _

There is commotion in the hall; he does not react outwardly, but tunes his hearing to focus on the noise rather than the questions coming from the woman. There is shouting, the sound of a scuffle. The woman has stopped talking. He does not move. He does not react. He is a shell; a nothing, and no one,  _ unimportant.  _ He will not dare to react. 

The door opens. He does not react. Through his hair, he watches the woman stand up, caution whoever is at the door. There is a grumble of a response, one he does not care to decipher; it is in Russian. This is a language he has been trained to know only a few words in. Whatever the person at the door says, it makes the woman leave, shutting the door behind her. 

He looks back down at the blanket. 

“Steve?” 

He knows that voice. But. He does  _ not.  _ He knows no voice; only commands. And there are many commands to remember. Sometimes he doesn’t even have to remember the commands, sometimes they are simply said and he acts as he is supposed to. He likes those commands; they mean he doesn’t have to think. Doesn’t have to dig through the shards of glass that is supposed to be his brain. 

“Steve? Can you look at me, baby?” 

It’s the ‘baby’ that stumps him. It’s said with something in the voice that insinuates fondness, makes him realise that this person thinks he and them were something of an item. He almost laughs.  _ Almost.  _ He doesn’t know any kindness, doesn’t know what fondness would feel like. He looks up anyway - if only just to see what this person looks like. 

The person is a man. He has broad shoulders, dark hair pulled back and eyes that stare down deep, reading everything. There’s something about him that screams both danger and safety. “Oh, god,” he breathes, eyes wide. “What have they done to you?”

He is nothing, but they called him things like ‘good boy’ and ‘pretty thing’. The most common one was ‘puppet’. That was what they liked to have a laugh about; for some reason, it was amusing to them. Here and now, is he still a good boy? Is he still a puppet? Or is he supposed to be Steve? Is this some sort of new training? Is this a test? 

“Is this a test?” he rasps and bites his tongue the moment it comes out. This is the first thing he’s said since he woke up here, laid out on a steel table, tools digging into his flesh, stitching him back together. 

The man’s throat bobs and his eyes turn misty. He shakes himself, suddenly, before his eyes turn to steel and he seems to get ahold of himself. He does not answer the question, instead sitting down in the chair countless others had, eyes studying his face. He introduces himself as Bucky. “Who are you?” Bucky asks.

Who is he? He doesn’t know. Why doesn’t Bucky know, if they’ve brought him here? He thought they knew him as Steve. He scowls at the blanket, furious with how his head is reeling. He knows this question. “Nothing,” he replies. He is nothing. 

There is silence from Bucky for a long moment, like Bucky is gathering himself to ask another question. “Do you have a name?” comes next. 

“You called me Steve,” he replies, nails digging into his palms from where his hands have clenched. 

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Where were you before you came here?” 

“In the water,” he answers. Bucky is an excellent interrogator. He’s asking all the right questions. 

It seems he’s not giving Bucky the answers Bucky wants, though. The anger in the room is growing every time he speaks. Perhaps Bucky is going to punish him soon. “That’s where we found you. Where were you before that?”

“Training.”

“For what?”

He remembers his mouth stretched wide, throbbing flesh heavy on his tongue. He remember his knees scraped raw, his spine arched back, his hips gripped hard enough to leave bruises. He remembers his wrists chained down to the floor, a whip lashing over the skin on his back, hard enough to break it and damage his ribs.  _ Good boy. Take it, just like that. God, you’re so pretty, aren’t you, puppet? Too bad you’re not gonna be of use to us for much longer. Gotta train you up real good for your new owner, huh, pretty boy? _

“New owner,” he parrots.

The silence that follows is deafening. Bucky shoves himself away from the table and stands, his breathing turning up a notch. At a glance, he seems to be thinking, but he’s too still, fists clenched and his eyes are squeezed shut. These are all signs that point towards anger. Maybe the punishment is more imminent than previously assumed. 

“Who was training you?” comes instead of a closed fist. 

He thinks about that for a moment, wonders if he should be concerned that he doesn’t know the answer. He remains silent, staring at the wool. There is a pained noise from Bucky and he risks looking at him through his hair. Bucky is moving forwards again, hands - one of them is metal? - reaching for him. Here it is. He sinks into the comfort of punishment, a smile nearly tugging it’s way onto his face. This is something he knows. 

Instead of pain, the cuffs are taken off his wrists. He frowns down at the chains, now not connected to him, before frowning up at Bucky. Bucky’s looking down at him, mouth pressed into a thin line. “Come with me,” he says.

He stands up, mourning the loss of the blanket as it falls off his shoulders. It is not his. He leaves it behind. He is led out into the hallway, to the left and through a maze of corridors. He doesn’t bother remembering each turn they make. He has no need to be back in that cell. Instead, he focuses on the ground as he walks, wonders where he is going. 

Bucky walks beside him, not touching, just leading. There are no people, as if everyone has been cleared out as he is transported. There had been lots of people when he had been brought here. They had all stared. He had stared at his hair, letting it hang in front of his face, his head bowed. 

They are outside. “Steve?” comes from beside him. 

He is staring up at the sky, his mouth hanging open. This is a breeze, blowing his lank hair away from his face. The sun is - oh  _ god.  _ The sun is beaming down, warming his skin like nothing he’s ever felt before. It seeps right through his flesh, down past his muscles and into his bones. It is nothing like the icy water he had been kept in when not being used. Without his volition, his eyelids slip down over his eyes as he just  _ feels  _ the sun. 

“Steve,” is said again, softly this time. 

He opens his eyes, drops his head back down and stares at the pavement, concentrating on the grey. The sky is not for him, then. He waits for the order to get on his knees, open his mouth like the good boy he is, but it never comes. Instead, he is guided to a waiting car and shut inside. Is this his new owner? He dares to look at the driver, but there is no one. 

Bucky gets in the other side and the car begins moving. Bucky does not look surprised, so he does not question it. Perhaps he is being taken to his new owner. It would make sense that he had been cleaned up and repaired for them, then. He does not dare look out the window like he so desperately wants to. The other times he had been transported, it had been with his face dutifully buried either in someone’s crotch or next to their boots the entire way. Why is he being allowed to sit up now?

Perhaps his new owner wants him to behave in a different way. He stays where he is, tense and ready to do as ordered. The car drives for a while, weaving through the streets until it is parking in an underground car park among many other flashy cars. Bucky gets out the other side, opens his door and he gets out without being told to, eyes on Bucky’s boots. They are similar to the ones that had broken his bones so many times. 

Bucky is transporting him to his new owner, then. 

Had Bucky been one of the ones training him for his new owner? This, too, makes sense. The questions - had be been making sure he didn’t know anything important? Remembered his training? A blank slate for his new owner? He almost smiles as everything begins to fall into place. He is no longer lost. He knows his purpose, again. And the use of the name Steve - is this what his new owner has named him?

“Am I Steve?” he asks, daring to look up at Bucky as he is led to an elevator. 

Bucky’s attention flies to him, eyes searching his face. Whatever he is looking for, he seems not to find, because his shoulders drop. “Yeah, you’re Steve,” Bucky murmurs. 

He nods to himself. That’s settled, then. He is Steve. This is what he has been named. He steps into the elevator with Bucky, stands at rest as it goes up and up and up. This is a big building. It makes sense - he remembers his trainers telling him he was worth a lot of money. His owner would have to be rich to buy him.  _ You’re gonna be worth a lot of money when we’re done with you, pretty boy. C’mon, open up. On your knees. God, so gorgeous, aren’t you? Even covered in everyone’s come like this. Fuck, there’s a good boy.  _

He shakes himself out of the memory, faces swimming in the holes in his mind, unable to be made out. The elevator doors open and he and Bucky step out. They are in a hallway with only one door, one that Bucky produces a card that reveals a thumb print scanner. This is it. Steve is to meet his new owner now. 

The door unlocks and Bucky opens it, glancing back at Steve with something indecipherable in his eyes. The first thing Steve notices is that his owner must like art. It’s all over the walls; sketches pinned up, paintings on canvas hung and drawings framed alongside each other. Next thing that draws his attention is the windows; they’re  _ massive,  _ spanning whole walls, revealing the city below and the skyline stretching out over water. 

Steve clenches his jaw and looks down at the floor again, feeling Bucky’s eyes on him. He remembers the sky is not for him. “Sorry,” he says, wonders what his punishment will be, if Bucky or his new owner will deal it out. 

Only Bucky just looks confused. “What?” he asks.

Steve winces. He’s already slipping out of protocol. “Sorry, sir,” he corrects himself, eyes boring straight into Bucky’s boots. He can already taste the rubber. 

Bucky doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. Steve risks glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, and Bucky looks pale, his eyes distant. He seems to take a deep breath, like he’s calming himself down. Perhaps Steve’s new owner doesn’t want Steve to have any marks on him when they receive him. Bucky clears his throat and Steve’s attention flies straight to him again, sharp and focused. 

“Steve, do you want to sit down?” Bucky asks. 

Steve frowns. ‘Want’ is a foreign concept. He’s wanted very few things before, but he knows he was and never is allowed them. He  _ shouldn’t  _ want, but he figures as long as no one ever knows he can’t be punished for it. So he thinks on the strange question and finds that it could be taken as an order and hurries to obey, knees cracking as he sits where he is. 

“That’s not -” Bucky sucks in a breath through his teeth and stops the sentence, closing his eyes for a moment. Steve knows because he’s watching Bucky’s face subtly, trying to gauge what it is Bucky exactly wants. 

Bucky’s incredibly hard to read. Steve’s previous trainers weren’t. He could do exactly as they wanted without them even asking. They always rewarded him for it.  _ Such a good boy, aren’t you, puppet? Already on your knees waiting for us, the moment you heard us coming, huh? God, it’s a pity we won’t have you around forever. We better use you good while we have you, right, puppet? That’s it, mouth open, good boy - fuck - softer lips than the Asset ever had. _

Steve never really listened to what they were saying. They liked to talk a lot when they were with him. He knew his place; what they liked, what his purpose was, what they were training him for. He always did well, he knows because they always told him. They told him why he was born, though they often used the word ‘reborn’, like this wasn’t his first life. They mentioned things like a ‘wipe’ or a ‘reset’, but he never could remember what happened after that. All he knew was that he felt better, like he was back on track. There were no conflicting thoughts. 

“Steve, do you know where we are right now?” comes through the memories. 

Bucky’s sat down on the ground as well, looking at Steve as he stares down at his knees. Strangely, Steve finds that he misses the cold dampness of his cell. At least there he had no questions he had to answer. Only things he had to do. “At my new owners,” Steve answers, willing his body to remain still, though it just wants to lie down. He hasn’t slept in a long time. 

“What?” Bucky snaps, voice harsh and surprised. 

Steve nearly looks up, the tone whipping through him and leaving his heart thudding. He squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on not curling into himself. He has been trained not to. He is pliant and willing. “Sir?” he asks, frustrated that he doesn’t know the correct answer Bucky wants. 

“I’m not - my name’s Bucky. You call me Bucky,” Bucky says, sounding slightly strangled. 

Steve presses his lips together, confused. He never ever knew any of his trainer’s names, let alone told to call them by it. But Bucky. Bucky wants Steve to refer to him as  _ Bucky.  _ It’s more than confusing. But Steve takes it in his stride - the trainers are  _ always  _ right. “Bucky,” he corrects himself, hoping to all gods that he’s finally gotten something right. 

A smidgen of tension slides out from the room and Steve nearly lets himself relax. Until the next questions. “Why do you think we’re at your new owner’s?” 

Steve blanches, thrown off the axle. Are they not? “Because - it’s what you and the rest of the trainers were training me for, sir -  _ Bucky.  _ You said I had to be trained up real good for the highest bidder, that I had to be worth the money. Why else would I be out of the water, not in the cell and not in the Chair?” he explains, once again wondering if this is all a test. 

Bucky’s gone white again, silent as the moon. In one fluid motion, he’s standing up and striding out of the room. Steve stays where he is, kneeling on the ground, reeling from this entire situation. He’s confused, lost, wishing for the routine he once had. He’d be dragged from the icy water, shivering and sometimes all healed up from the previous training session, put in the cell and he’d wait for the trainers. He’d be trained for however long the trainers saw fit, then he’d sometimes have enough time to sleep and start healing, then he’d be taken to the - the - the Chair? He forgets what the Chair is for. But it must help, because afterwards he’d be put back in the water to wait for the next session. 

Is this his new cell? It’s vastly different from the previous one, but everything’s changed. Perhaps he’s supposed to be sleeping, now that the trainer is gone. Not that they trained for much, unless his new owner has a different training routine. Or is his training complete? He resists the urge to drag a hand down his face. Everything’s so  _ different.  _ He doesn’t like it. 

He stays on his knees, waits for something. Anything. Twenty minutes pass. Nothing happens. No one comes to take him to the Chair. He slides out of his kneeling position and onto his side, curling into a ball. He has no wounds to heal, though the strapping on his ribs is still there, as are the bandages. The water used to help him heal quicker - he could  _ feel  _ the cuts and scrapes knitting back together, itching like crazy till they turned to scars and eventually back to smooth flesh. 

He keeps his eyes closed and wills himself to sleep. 

*

When he wakes, it’s of his own volition. There are no hands slapping his awake, no yelling, no nothing. This is enough to send him reeling in confusion again. He opens his eyes and sits up, settling back onto his knees. The room remains unchanged, expect there is a man he doesn’t know sitting on the couch with a book in his hands. 

Shock thrums through him. Is this his new owner? Maybe everything _had_ been a test. Bucky isnowhere to be seen. Steve doesn’t dare speak - he has no clue as to what it is his owner expects of him, apart from his training, but the trainers  _ always  _ initiated everything. That was just how it worked. It’s what he knows. So he sits and waits. 

It takes a while for the man to notice him, but when he does, his eyes glance from the book to Steve and back again before a jolt goes through the man as he realises Steve is awake. Steve remains impassive, eyes at his owner’s feet, waiting. The man has his feet up on the couch, but he swings them around and settles into a normal sitting position. Steve can see his face moving through several expressions, before settling on calm. 

This  _ has  _ to be Steve’s new owner. There’s no other explanation. 

“Hi, Steve,” the man says, and his voice cuts through the ringing in Steve’s ears, letting something in him settle. 

Steve almost smiles. Almost. “Sir,” he replies. Most of the trainers expected an answer when they spoke directly to him. 

His owner doesn’t react the way Bucky had, but a muscle in his jaw twitches. “Call me Sam,” his owner says. 

Maybe when Bucky had asked Steve to call him by his name he had simply been preparing Steve for his owners request. This time, Steve doesn’t even hesitate before nodding and complying. “Sam,” he corrects himself. 

Sam smiles, but if Steve reads it right, there’s something terribly sad behind his eyes. Steve doesn’t bother trying to understand it - it’s not his place. His place is to be owned. He was trained for this in all the ways that matter. That’s what’s solid in his mind. That’s what he  _ knows.  _

“Come sit next to me on the couch, Steve,” Sam orders him and Steve’s only so happy to comply. 

Where Bucky was confusing, commanding him with open-ended orders, Sam tells him what to do and the uncomfortable itching under Steve’s skin disappears. It is Steve’s place to obey. This is what he knows. He rocks forwards on his knees and crawls over to the couch, eyes still on Sam’s feet. If he’s not mistaken, he hears a hitch in Sam’s breathing, but he pays no attention to it. Steve rises to sit on the couch, feeling uncomfortable at being in the same position as his owner. 

He doesn’t dare look up from where his hands are on his knees, palms facing the ceiling. Sam is silent for a moment and Steve can feel his gaze hot on the side of his face. “I want you to tell me what you think is happening right now, okay, Steve?” Sam says, voice soft.

Steve frowns. Is he still being tested? Did Bucky not tell Sam that Steve is fully trained? “I am yours,” he starts, struggling to find the right words. His trainers, except Bucky, never really wanted him to talk. “You are my new owner.”

There’s the hitch in Sam’s breathing again, like this isn’t what he expected. Steve worries, hoping he’s said the right thing for once. Bucky hadn’t seemed to like any of his answers. “How did you come to that conclusion?” Sam continues. 

Steve immediately puts everything together in the way he’s made sense of it. “I was taken from the water and that means more training but I didn’t go to the cell, I went to that building and they stitched me up and bandaged my ribs so I would heal faster for you, and then I was chained up in the mirror-cell and they questioned me to make sure I was ready for you. Bucky completed my final training and took me here to this new cell and when he was done training me I went to sleep because no one took me to the Chair.”

Sam’s still looking at him and at a glance it looks like his eyes have turned to flint. His lips are pressed into a thin line but when he catches Steve looking, his face smoothes back out into a calm expression. Steve looks away immediately, unable to hold back the flinch that follows at being caught out with his eyes up. He curses himself - how could he have let himself muck up this early on?

“Steve,” comes from Sam. 

Steve stares resolutely at his hands, determined to be good. “Sam?” he answers, because he is to always answer when spoken directly to. 

“You can look at me, Steve. You can maintain eye contact and you don’t have to keep your eyes down,” Sam tells him and Steve can’t help the quick intake of breath, shocked. 

He frowns down at his hands, biting down on his tongue as he thinks this over. This is a test. He doesn’t know what the right next step is. Does he keep his eyes down like all his training has told him, or does he obey his owner no matter what like his training has  _ also  _ told him? The former had always been the most important;  _ obey.  _ So he looks up and searches Sam’s face before letting his eyes settle just left to his owner’s eyes. 

“That’s good, Steve. Now, I’m going to ask you some more questions, is that okay? You can say no if you just want to rest,” Sam continues. 

Steve frowns, immediately confused. He is to do whatever his owner wants him to. Sam clearly wants to ask more questions, so why is he asking  _ Steve  _ if that’s okay? But Sam wants an answer. “Yes, Sam,” Steve says, preparing himself for another round of mentally exhausting interrogation.

“Are you says yes because I want you to or because you want to?” Sam asks, catching Steve out. 

Steve’s mouth drops open and he fish-mouths for a moment before snapping his jaw shut and reverting his eyes back to his hands. “I am to do whatever my owner wants me to,” he reminds Sam. Was Sam not informed of his training? Steve thought he had been trained specifically for his owner. 

Sam is quiet, clearly thinking and Steve just wants the Chair. He’s  _ exhausted.  _ He has no idea what’s going on. He’s - he must be malfunctioning. He’s thinking too clearly. There’s a muscle in Sam’s forearm that’s jumping as Sam flexes a fist. Steve closes his eyes, forcing himself not to look at it. 

“Steve, is there anything  _ you  _ want?” Sam asks, voice steady but Steve can  _ hear  _ how out of depth he is. His owner was clearly not briefed. Will Steve be punished, or will his trainers? He highly doubts it’s his trainers faults. Steve most likely did not pay attention enough. 

Steve scowls at the backs of his eyelids. “I want what my owner wants,” he echoes immediately. 

“What is it you think I want?” Sam shoots back. 

Steve wants to curl into a ball. He does not say this. “Me to obey. Me to be good. I  _ am -  _ I’m a good boy - sir - I’ll be good for you - so good - a pretty puppet -” he’s struggling to breathe, too many conflicting thoughts in his head, too much confusion, too many things happening that he doesn’t know how to cope with. 

He doesn’t register Sam’s hands on him till the ringing in his ears goes away. He almost recoils the moment he realises he’s brought his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them, but he doesn’t dare move from his owner’s grip. He  _ shudders  _ at the feel of one of Sam’s hands moving up and down his back in a slow, soothing movement, then freezes again. It feels so  _ good.  _ He doesn’t move for the fear of Sam stopping. 

He risks a glance at Sam’s face - Sam  _ said  _ he could look - and Sam looks terrifyingly  _ furious.  _ Steve flinches, then curses himself the moment Sam’s hand stops moving. He mourns the loss of the sensation - so warm and good, sending tingles up his spine, making him shiver. He wonders how in the hell he’s already fucked up so bad.

“Hey, Steve, are you back with me?” comes from Sam. Steve nods into his knees, gritting his teeth and cursing himself over and over. “That’s good Steve, that’s real good. Where were you thinking about just then?” Sam asks. 

Steve frowns. He was right here. “With you,” he answers. 

It’s not the right answer, he knows, but Sam doesn’t mention it. Instead, he asks  _ another  _ question. “Is there anything you need right now?” 

Steve freezes up again, so much that he can feel Sam’s fingers twitch in surprise. Steve knows the answer to this question with such surety it rocks through him like a whip. He has been asked this is a variation;  _ ‘what do you need right now, puppet?’  _ He knows. He knows. “The Chair. Please, the Chair.” He had never begged before, but now, he does. He wants it so badly his teeth ache. Anything to stop this feeling - this  _ terror,  _ this confusion, this unbalance. 

Sam sucks in a breath through his teeth and Steve thinks finally, he’s said the right thing. Sam pulls away from him and Steve mourns the loss for a split second before he’s standing as Sam does. “Come on, Steve,” Sam says, leading him out of the room and into a hallway. 

This hallway is nothing like the one Steve’s used to, but that doesn’t matter. He’s going to get the Chair. He’s going to be reset, and when it’s over he’s going to be put in the water and everything will be okay again. Everything will make sense. Sam opens one of the doors and - there’s nothing but a bedroom. Steve frowns at it, but Sam encourages him forwards so Steve goes. 

“Take your shoes off and hop into bed, Steve,” Sam says. 

Steve feels his blood turn to ice as he realises what’s about to happen. This is something he knows. He takes his shoes off and pads over to the bed, climbing up onto it. Sam’s still standing by the door, so he must want Steve to get into position first. Some of his trainers liked that. So he gets on his stomach and tucks his knees up under his belly, his ass in the air. 

There’s a sharp exhale from Sam and Steve hears him walking over. There’s needles in Steve’s stomach. “Not for that, Steve. Lay down. I want you to rest, okay?” he says. 

Steve frowns, rolling over onto his side and looking at Sam. Sam just nods and pulls back the covers. Steve gets under them, swimming in the confusion, but just complies, letting Sam put the blankets back over him. “Rest,” Sam reminds him, before he’s walking out of the room, leaving the door open.

Steve blinks at the ceiling and tries to pretend he’s submerged in icy water, snow falling down onto his bare skin. 

<>

It’s all Sam can do not to explode the moment he leaves the room. There’s anger he hasn’t felt in a  _ long  _ time writhing in his stomach, making him feel sick. He remembers bitterly the hope he’s felt when they’d found where HYDRA were holding Steve - after  _ nine months  _ of fruitless searching - and the excitement at the prospect of getting him back. 

He remembers so, so clearly, fighting right alongside Barnes, leaving the other Avengers in the dust and moving through the base with a fire underneath him. HYDRA agents were left in a trail behind them and then - and then they’d found the basement. It’d been eerily cold there, all stone walls and endless cells. 

At one glance, Sam had known that Barnes knew what was down there. He’d been there before. Barnes had looked horrified, face sickly pale, but he’d squared his jaw and moved forwards. Sam had no idea what to expect, really. A body? Steve chained up and left for dead? Steve reverted to HYDRA’s side the same way Barnes had been? 

None of his guesses had been corrected. He hadn’t been  _ prepared.  _

He and Barnes had checked every cell. Some of them held bodies, lifeless and forgotten in various stages of decay, but most were empty. Sam had felt the hope slowly slipping away. But then they reached a cell that was open, hinges oiled, room clearly well used. There was nothing in there but puddles on the ground - water, blood. But the  _ smell  _ of the cell - he and Barnes both knew what had happened in it. Probably over and over. 

Sam could remember just hoping it wasn’t what he knew it was. They had moved on, gotten to the very end of the long hallway. They had both been shivering at this point, the air was so frigid. Barnes had frozen in front of one of the door, opening it with his metal hand. Inside there was one of the Chairs and Sam had just felt his heart drop out of his chest. There were files everywhere - computers, too. They’d radioed Natasha, asked her to come collect everything she could. 

The last cell’s door has been nearly frozen shut and it had a keypad on the wall. Barnes had gotten the door open with a code and Sam hadn’t asked how he knew it. He wasn’t sure Barnes even knew. Inside, at first, there appeared to be nothing. There was no ceiling, only bars close enough together that no human could climb in or out. There was snow falling steadily into the room, covering the concrete floor. 

In the corner of the cell there had been a hold in the ground, machine dug. It had been full of water, covered in ice and snow. And in it -  _ Steve.  _

He remembers he and Barnes hauling Steve out, dimly noticing his nudity, the burn marks on his temples, the deep slashes on his back and shoulders and the mottled bruises all over his ribs. He remembers calling to get the med team ready, remembers Barnes scooping Steve up bridal style and marching them the fuck out of there. 

They’d blown the base to pieces, after. 

Steve had woken up while he was being stitched up. He’d been sedated again soon after. They’d let him wake up in a room on a bed before beginning the questioning. Sam remembers standing behind the one-way glass and just staring at the shell of a human being - who used to be  _ Steve.  _ He remembers the quiet despair coming from Barnes who stood beside him. 

Barnes had gone in and Steve had begun to open up, to talk. That was the first sign that Steve was no longer  _ Steve.  _

Sam takes a deep breath and runs a hand over his head, trying to calm down. It’s so much worse than they could have thought. He knows Barnes isn’t taking this any bit well - he’d been the one to bring Steve back to the Avengers Base and try get him settled back into his apartment, but he hadn’t even recognised it as his own. And then when Barnes had tried talking to him, trying to figure out his headspace -  _ god.  _

Barnes had stormed into the kitchen where Sam had been waiting with thunder on his face and a quivering lip.  _ “He thinks I’m one of  _ them, _ ”  _ he’d said. Then it had been Sam’s turn, once Barnes had explained everything that had happened and what he’d found out. Steve thinks that Sam and Barnes are HYDRA and that Sam’s his  _ owner,  _ the one he’s been ‘trained’ for. It makes bile rise in Sam’s throat, but in all honestly, in Steve’s mind this makes sense. This is the conclusion he’s come to after being saved. 

Questions remain; does Steve remember  _ anything  _ about being Steve Rogers? Will he ever remember? And where the hell are they supposed to go from here?

“Well?” comes from behind him. 

Sam doesn’t jump, though it’s a close thing. He’s gotten used to Barnes sneaking up on him. “He thinks I’m his new owner. I don’t - I don’t think he realises at all what he’s been through,” he mutters. 

When he looks up, he finds Barnes standing rigid in the hallway, face like it’s been carved out of stone. There’s a darkness behind his eyes that Sam  _ knows;  _ he feels it too. “Natalia put together everything she found. There are - there’s videos,” Barnes says. 

Sam swallows, looking away. “Have you seen them?” he asks.

“No,” Barnes replies, but Sam knows he’s going to watch them. He shouldn’t, but it’s  _ Barnes.  _

Sam sighs, straightening his shoulders and gathering courage. “Let’s go see the files, at least. See where to go from here. FRIDAY will watch Steve,” he says, heading for the front door. 

“You need to sleep, Sam,” Barnes reminds him. 

Sam rolls his eyes, tugging his shoes on. “Tonight. Also, you do too.”

Barnes says nothing and they head up to the Avengers communal rooms, finding both Natasha and Clint at the dining table in the dining room. There are files spread out over the table, two laptops set up. Sam hasn’t seen Natasha so dead-faced in a long, long time. It worries the hell out of him. Even Clint looks strangely blank, a nauseous twist to his mouth. 

“You’re going to want to sit down for this,” Natasha says, not looking up as Sam and Barnes come in. Sam sits down. Natasha sits up, facing them with a look that projects ‘no one’s home in here’. He doesn’t dare say anything. “They wiped him the moment they got him to the base. He’s been there the whole time. It took seven full wipes to get him  _ compliant  _ and  _ empty,”  _ she reports. “Then they started a routine. It’s the only thing he’s known for nine months.”

Sam almost wants to say he doesn’t want to know. He tries to conjure an image of Steve smiling, laughing, but he can’t get it right. So he squares his jaw and nods for Natasha to continue. If he ever wants to see that again he needs to know what to do to help Steve. Natasha searches his face and she must find something there because she continues. 

“When they weren’t beating him, whipping him and raping him, he was kept in the room you two found him in. When he started showing signs of confusion or that he might be remembering something, they wiped him. Around the eight month mark, they started spreading word of an auction. They were going to sell him at the ten month mark,” Natasha says. 

Sam swallows down sick and casts his eyes to the laptops. Natasha’s hand, laying on top of a file, twitches. “I don’t know if you want to see those,” she warns. 

“That’s not for you to say,” Barnes says. 

Sam looks up to see them staring each other down. Natasha’s mouth twists and she shoves a laptop over. The screen shows files and files of video logs. There are some labelled ‘wipe #_’ and some labelled ‘training.’ There are two Sam can see labelled ‘storage’. Before he can move, Barnes is clicking on one of the wipes labelled ‘wipe #36’. Sam grits his teeth, trying to calm his racing heart. 

The video buffers, and then it’s playing. It’s recorded from a camera in the corner of the room, focused on the Chair. There are techs preparing the Chair, mulling around the room when a naked Steve is hauled in through the door, two black-clad HYDRA agents on either side of him, dragging him along. His knees are scraped raw, his eyes fighting to stay open, his back covered in lashes. His face is bruised. 

A jolt of shock goes through Sam as he realises there’s  _ sound  _ on the video. He swallows dryly, wondering if he really wants to watch this. At a glance, he see Barnes staring at the screen with fire behind his eyes. Sam looks back. Steve’s been strapped into the Chair, his head lolling to the side. He’s looking around the room, confusion set in the frown on his face. He seems to realise he’s been strapped in, because he gives an experimental tug at the restraints. 

He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before there’s a mouth guard shoved between his teeth. Beside Sam, Barnes flinches. Switches are turned, metal clamps around Steve’s head and this is where Steve seems to realise what’s happening. He tugs at the restraints again, but the Chair’s moving back and starting to buzz. Steve tries to shake his head. He’s  _ moaning,  _ eyes rolling white with fear. He bucks up against the restraints, whimpering. 

The sounds coming from his mouth sound like ‘ _ no no no no no no’.  _

“Barnes…” Sam warns, horror setting in his stomach like a rock. Barnes doesn’t move his gaze from the screen. The Chair switches on and Sam slams the screen down just as the first scream pierces their ears. Barnes shoots up from his chair and storms out, the door slamming behind him. 

Sam sits numb in his own chair, staring at the closed laptop. “Is there anything in here that can be used to help Steve?” he asks. 

“Not much. All of the reports say that he’s been fighting the wipes, though. He regained memories or a sense that something was wrong at least once a week,” Natasha says. “His brain heals fast. I think the best thing to do would be explaining to Steve what the situation is right now.”

Sam nods. 

He’s so out of his depth. 

<>

Steve hasn’t moved since Sam came back, sat down on the edge of the bed and laid everything out. His name is Steve Rogers. He was recently rescued from a group of people who were apparently doing him a great deal of harm. Sam is not his owner. Bucky is not one of his trainers. He’s safe. He never has to go back to that cell, the water, the Chair. 

His jaw aches from where he’s clenching it so tight. 

Sam’s still here, watching him. Waiting. For what, Steve doesn’t know. For Steve, the ground has been ripped out from under him. Everything he knew, everything he thought was true suddenly  _ isn’t.  _ He has no purpose. They weren’t training him for Sam, they were training him for someone else. Someone who was going to hurt him, but - Sam says that’s a bad thing. Is it? Steve had been trained that he doesn’t matter. His trainers matter. His owner matters. He is nothing. 

He stares down at the comforter, wonders why he’s reacting this way. Why is he questioning it? Even is Sam says he’s not Steve’s owner, Steve was still bred to obey -  _ but he wasn’t.  _ Sam says he wasn’t bred to do anything he doesn’t want to. But what Steve wants doesn’t matter. But Sam says it does. 

Steve blinks, nice and slow. Sam had called his training ‘torture and rape’. It hadn’t been training at all. It had been for his trainers - torturers - rapists - own pleasure. But. Why does that matter? What Steve wants doesn’t matter. Even if he hadn’t actually been trained, what Steve wants doesn’t matter. 

But Sam says it does. He says Steve matters. He says that if Steve wants something then he’s allowed to want it. He’s allowed to be - to be human? Steve doesn’t even know what that means. So he sits and stares, trying to process. Sam says that Steve’s job now is to rest and recover. Steve is supposed to do as his owner says. Sam says he’s not Steve’s owner. 

Steve’s allowed to want things. Sam said so. “I want the Chair,” he says. 

Sam’s face twists up - just for a moment - before settling back into that calm, patient expression. “I can’t do that for you,” Sam tells him. 

There’s something in Sam’s voice that tells Steve Sam knows exactly what the Chair is. If Sam’s not Steve’s owner why would he know about the Chair? Steve  _ knows  _ Sam’s lying. Sam could. He could put Steve in the Chair and make all of this go away. He just won’t. Steve accepts this. Steve’s wants don’t matter. 

“Yes, Sam,” he says, and straightens up to wait for the next order. 

Sam looks sad, mostly, but he gets up and asks if Steve’s hungry. Steve doesn’t know what that is, but he nods, because it’s clear Sam expects Steve to be. Steve’s figured out that questions can be translated into commands. Sam leads him to a kitchen, says he can sit down if he wants. Steve remembers Bucky’s disappointment when he sat where he was, remembers Sam asking him to sit on the couch with him, so Steve sits on a chair at the table, digs his fingers into the base of it and breathes. 

He wonders what it is Sam wants him to heal from. 

“I’m making a lasagna for dinner, you really like - you’ll really like it. There’s some fruit in the fridge, though, if you want some?” Sam asks. 

Steve nods, eyes following Sam as he moves around the kitchen. He wonders what lasagne is. In the back of his mind, it’s familiar. He ignores it. Sam pulls a container out of what must be the fridge, something that makes the word ‘icebox’ flash through his mind. He ignores that, too. He’s got a headache. 

Sam’s putting the fruit in a bowl when a door opens and shuts. Steve gauges Sam’s reaction, sees him tense up and pin his gaze on the doorway into the kitchen. All Steve can think is -  _ protect.  _ He doesn’t know where it comes from, but his body tenses, moves into a position he knows he could launch out of and attack in a second. 

He doesn’t have to. Bucky walks through the door and Steve sinks right down into the chair, hunching in on himself. He fixes his eyes on his knees and resolutely does not look at Bucky. He listens to his footsteps instead; they hesitate in the doorway before moving over to where Sam is in the kitchen. 

They talk in low voices. Steve doesn’t bother trying to hear what they’re saying. He wonders what happens now. 

  
*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings Explained**
> 
> - _Implied and brief recollection of rape/non-con;_ Steve has been raped over and over, so there's the implication that he has throughout the entire fic and he remembers it, too, and there are a few paragraphs that include him thinking about what was said to him during and what was being done to him. 
> 
> - _Mind-Wipe;_ Steve has been put in the Chair and it's been used on him over and over and over and he's been reduced to what he knows about the past nine months. He had been wiped, like Bucky was. 
> 
> - _Implied and brief recollection of torture;_ Steve, on top of rape (which is torture too, but) has been tortured and it's implied throughout the fic that whips and fists, boots, that sort of things have been used to harm him. A few paragraphs include him remembering/thinking about this torture.
> 
> - _Steve making assumptions of people he used to know that aren't very nice at all;_ Steve had been told that he was being 'trained' by the HYDRA assholes that were raping/torturing him to be sold off to a new 'owner'. Steve comes to the conclusions that Bucky is one of his 'trainers' and that Sam is his owner. Both of these assumptions are completely untrue. 
> 
> - _Steve thinking what's been done to him isn't bad;_ Steve's nine months with HYDRA is all he knows in the beginning and all he knows about that is that it's normal. He doesn't know what rape or torture is, he doesn't know that it's worse than bad, so he doesn't think this. It is, but in the fic it's mostly Steve's POV and we're inside his head so it implies that he doesn't care about what's been done to him and doesn't know/think that it's bad. 
> 
> OKAY so those are the warnings for Part One.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> snapshots of Steve recovering his memories and beginning the path to a difficult recovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings for Part Two**
> 
> \- Steve wishing for what he's used to aka his time in HYDRA's hands  
> \- Steve having a disregard for his life  
> \- Steve having extreme dysphoria (not the gender kind)  
> \- Steve not expecting to see his serum-self in the mirror and having a panic attack because of it   
> \- Flashbacks

“Hey Steve, what do you want for lunch?” Bucky asks as he walks into the room, startling Steve from where he’s studying the art all over the walls. There’s one picture in particular he’s drawn to; a rough sketch of Sam, something that’s been created by someone with an intense attention to detail.

He raises his hand, touches his fingertips to the paper, eyes drinking in every detail of the sketch. He can feel Bucky’s eyes on him. “What is it, Steve?” Bucky asks, and there’s something that sounds vaguely like hope in his voice. 

Steve wets his lips, taking his fingers away. They have charcoal on them. “Sam likes art,” he says. 

“He does, yeah. He really likes the artist who did all the art here,” Bucky tells him. There’s still something in his voice that makes Steve think he’s waiting for something, like there’s something Steve doesn’t know that he should. 

He frowns. “He didn’t do them himself?” he asks. 

“No, someone did them for him,” Bucky says.

Steve nods once, stepping back from the wall and looking around the room again. The desk sits lonely in the corner, half-finished sketches scattered across it, detailed drawings cast aside like they hadn’t worked out. There’s an easel set up beside the desk, a sheet over the canvas on it. Steve wants to know what’s under it, but he doesn’t dare ask. Instead, he realises that the person who did all of this did it  _ here.  _

“Where did they go?” he asks, glancing at Bucky.

Bucky looks tired. “He was taken from us. We don’t know if he’s coming back.”

Steve falls silent again, dropping his gaze and staring down at his socked feet. There’s something he’s missing, he knows, but he’s missing a lot. Instead of continuing the conversation that’s clearly causing Bucky pain, he answers his earlier question. “A sandwich?” Steve murmurs.

“Sure,” Bucky says, taking a step back towards the door. He hesitates, like there’s more he wants to say, but then he turns on his heel and leaves the door open behind him. 

Steve walks over to the desk, sits down in the chair. He feels like he’s sat here before and he looks out the window almost on instinct, finding himself dragging his eyes over the horizon before squeezing them shut as he looks at the sky on accident. He looks back down at the desk and his hands find a pencil. He puts it to the paper in front of him, an empty page ready to be drawn on. Without thinking, he lets his hand move until an image starts to form. 

It’s messy and half-formed, but Steve sits back and stares at the Brooklyn skyline, frowning. His eyes dart to a pile of sketches, finds several of the same image drawn there in a style that is exactly the same. He pushes away from the desk, standing up, horrified to find himself shaking. He squeezes his eyes shut, takes several deep breathes, and leaves the room, shutting it behind him. 

He’s not hungry anymore. He walks on heavy feet, feeling like he’s dragging himself through muddy water. He passes the kitchen without looking in, heads straight to the bathroom. He shuts the door and turns the cold tap in the bath on full force before stepping in, fully clothed. He sits and he stares at the running water, watching it fill up around him. It’s freezing, chilling him right to the bone. It calms the racing thoughts in his brain, slows them right down to nothing, till he’s settled and blank. 

He turns the tap off when it comes up to his hips and lays back, fully submerging himself in the water. He stares up at the ceiling and lets the cold seep right through him, numbing him, clearing his mind like Bucky and Sam won’t let the Chair do. His brain goes fuzzy. His body stops shivering, eventually. Everything goes still. 

“Steve?” 

Everything is quiet. He’s breathing slow and when he closes his eyes he can almost pretend that he’s just gotten back from the Chair. He can pretend that he can’t remember things he doesn’t remember learning, that he doesn’t have memories that can’t possibly be his, that everything he knows isn’t  _ true.  _ He can pretend that Bucky is his trainer and Sam is his owner and that he’s not their friend, he’s their  _ puppet.  _

“Steve, where are you?” 

He can pretend that everything’s okay and that the things he’s starting to believe aren’t true at all. He can pretend that the water he’s in isn’t in a bath, it’s in a hole in the ground in a cold, cold cell full of ice and snow. He can pretend that there is no ceiling above him, but bars and beyond those bars, snow-covered trees. He can pretend there are snowflakes on his eyelashes and that his body is starting to shut down instead of warm up the water around him. 

“Steve -”

The door opens. He doesn’t want to get out of the bath. Whoever’s there is going to  _ make  _ him. He just wants things to be simple again. He doesn’t even care for the pain he used to be constantly in. He doesn’t care for being raped over and over, as Sam calls it. He doesn’t  _ care.  _ He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

“Sam! I found him!” There are hands pulling him up out of the bath, cradling his head as his body is set on the lino. “Fuck - his lips are blue -  _ Steve,  _ god, what’ve you done,” is breathed into the space above him. He refuses to open his eyes and face reality. He is not Steve. He doesn’t - he doesn’t  _ want  _ to be Steve. He doesn’t want to be here. 

“Hey, Steve, can you open your eyes for me, honey?” 

_ Honey.  _ If he weren’t so numb, so deep in his head, he’d wince. He’s not  _ sweet,  _ he’s not lovely, he’s not Steve. He’s not. He can’t be. He wants to tell Bucky and Sam that, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes and face reality. He wants to stay in his nice ice bubble and pretend that everything is quiet and peaceful. That everything is simple. That nothing moves ever. 

“We need to get him warmed up.”

He grits his teeth; despite all his pretending he’s being dragged back to the surface. He finds there are hands on his shoulders, behind his head, hovering over him like they don’t know what to do. He blinks his eyes open and glares at the ceiling, finds himself wanting to see the sky. He hasn’t looked at it properly since -  _ the sky isn’t for him - _ but when he was in the ice water he would see the sky through the bars. 

“Hey, Steve, are you with us?” Sam’s asking, face coming into focus. Steve looks at him, presses his lips together and nods. Sam’s face melts into an expression of relief. “Why were you in the bath?” 

Steve wonders, when Sam says he can want things, why he’s not allowed to want this. Why he’s not allowed to want the Chair. “Don’t want to be here,” he mutters. 

There’s a sharp intake of breath. Silence, like no one knows what to say. “Here, as in the apartment, or here as in here in general?” Sam asks. 

“Don’t care,” Steve sighs, pulling away from their hands and sitting up, curling his arms around his knees, eyes focused on the water. 

Bucky’s face is deadly blank, Sam’s is unreadable but there’s that sadness that’s  _ always  _ there. 

*

After the bath incident, Steve starts  _ talking  _ to someone for an hour a day. Sam says it’ll help. Bucky doesn’t say much of anything. Apparently they both talk to people too, just less often. Steve doesn’t really understand it, but he answers all of Amina’s confusing questions. She gives him tasks to do, ‘homework’, and it just gets all a little overwhelming, but Sam and Bucky say it helps. 

So he goes. 

There’s something he’s missing, though. Something everyone is tiptoeing around and it’s something important. 

*

He doesn’t remember why he came into Sam’s room. All he knows right now is that there’s a picture, framed, on Sam’s bedside table. In the picture, there’s someone who looks - looks startlingly like him, but bigger. Broader. More muscular. They’re grinning, whole face lit up like everything they know right now is good and happy and pure. 

Steve knows that face. He’s - has he felt that? Impossible. Why would he - he stops, turns away from the picture, head reeling. There’s a mirror on the wall. He stares at it, stares at the person staring back at him. It’s the same person as in the picture but their face is gaunter, dark circles under their eyes. What happened to them? 

He frowns, and they do too. It’s not right. That’s not - that’s not  _ right.  _ That’s not  _ him.  _ He grits his jaw, watches the person in the mirror do exactly the same. He doesn’t think, just darts forwards, lashing out, brain spiralling into a whirlwind of desperation and pure, undiluted  _ terror  _ and confusion. He’s  _ Steve  _ and that’s not Steve. 

There’s blood on his knees and he’s staring down at them, his mind going a million miles a minute.  _ The smell of grit and blood and difficulty breathing but he’s getting up and Bucky’s at his side and they’re fighting back because they’ll always get back up.  _ He knows this one. This one is familiar. It’s something that happened a lot, back on the streets of Brooklyn 1920s.  _ Mud in his boots, in his hair, kneeling by the stream digging gravel out of his knees so they can heal up. He’d landed odd during the mission, collapsed to his knees. Bucky’d taken out the guy who’d been about to take advantage of the stumble.  _ Bucky’d probably saved his life more times that Steve knew. 

_ The rubble makes for a difficult terrain, the aliens coming left and right and he’s tripped up more than a few times. He honestly wouldn’t be surprised if his kneecaps will be shattered by the time this is all over.  _ This one is the most confusing. He’d been clad in a uniform, more so than the memory from the forest. Bucky’s not in this one.  _ Knees scraped raw, one of his trainers dicks heavy on his tongue. He doesn’t dare to acknowledge the pain. His knees will heal up just like they always do.  _

The last memory is the clearest. He blinks away the flashbacks, frowns at the cuts. He picks out of the glass pieces, sets it aside. Watches more blood flow from the wound. He wonders if Sam or Bucky heard the crash. There’s blood on his knuckles, too, from where he’d hit the mirror. He realises that he’d broken the mirror, if there’s glass on the ground. He’s kneeling in the glass. 

His heart thuds and he looks up at the shattered mirror, feels horror crawling up his throat. There’s no way - he’s got to be punished for this. There’s no way he won’t be. He swallows and stands up, more glass crunching underneath his feet. He ignores it, panicking, and looks around the room, trying to find something to clean this up with. 

“Steve?” 

Oh,  _ god.  _ He steps away, staring down at the mess with a pounding heart. It’s Bucky’s voice - it always is, he has far better hearing that Sam - and Steve thinks of how much stronger Bucky is, how much this is going to hurt. He knows how to make it quick, though. He knows what to do when he does something wrong. Something worth being punished for. Sam and Bucky have let way too many things slide for this to go unpunished. He  _ knows.  _

“Steve, I heard a crash? What’re you doing in Sam’s room? Are you okay?”

Steve can hear the worry in Bucky’s voice and he squeezes his eyes shut. He knows when Bucky’s come into the room and seen the mess because Bucky sucks in a breath. Steve bites down on his tongue and forces his eyes open, looking at Bucky’s face through his eyelashes. Bucky look shocked and oh  _ god  _ his eyes cut to Steve and his mouth parts a little, taking in the blood, the glass. 

Steve sinks back to his knees, intensely focussed on the way Bucky starts towards him, hands outstretched. “Bucky - I didn’t - I’m so sorry, sir, I accept punishment, sir,” Steve rambles, eyes on the ground even with his chin tilted up. His mouth stays open when he’s finished speaking, tongue at the bottom of his mouth. 

“Steve - no, honey, stand up, there’s glass in your knees,” is all Bucky says. 

Steve frowns, confused at the shakiness of Bucky’s voice. He stands anyway, obeys always, ignores the glass in his feet. Bucky’s not touching him, but he guides him over to the bed. Steve sits on it, avoids the picture on the bedside table like it’s the plague. He won’t look. He  _ won’t.  _ It causes malfunctions, as does his reflection. 

“Bucky, I -” he starts, but he doesn’t know where to go from there. 

Bucky’s shaking his head, checking Steve over for other wounds apart from the obvious ones. He sucks in a breath through his teeth at the state of Steve’s knuckles, casts a glance to the mirror. There’s understanding in his eyes when he looks back at Steve. “It’s okay, Steve. Just don’t go hurting yourself anymore, okay?” he says. 

Steve frowns, wonders what that even means. He’s allowed to ask questions, Sam said, so he says; “we always got back up, didn’t we?” 

Bucky freezes from where he’s carefully extracting glass from Steve’s knees. He looks up, eyes glassy. “Yeah, Stevie. You never knew when to give up,” he replies, voice trembling a little at the end. 

Steve nods, once, and catches the way Bucky’s gaze darts to the picture on the bedside table and back to the mirror again. Bucky gets a flannel, doesn’t bother too much with plasters; the wounds have already stopped bleeding. He checks over Steve’s feet, his knuckles before deeming Steve okay. He shakes his head, closing his eyes like he’s preparing himself for something. 

“Why’d you hit the mirror, Steve?” he asks. 

Steve frowns. “The person in the picture was there. I didn’t - it wasn’t me,” he answers, knows that his shoulders, though broad, are bony and that he’s nearly half the height that the person in the mirror.

“What were you expecting to see?” Bucky asks, his voice strangled, though he’s trying to maintain composure. 

Steve’s gaze drifts to the right, trying to remember what he looks like. He hasn’t seen himself in a very, very long time. “Me,” he murmurs, before elaborating. “I’m short, aren’t I? Small. Slim. You - my hands are too big for my body and my ribs stick out too much but that’s okay because we always have just enough food, right Buck? We’re doin’ okay.” He doesn’t know where it comes from. 

Bucky’s eyes are misty and he works his jaw, suddenly very interested in the floor. “Yeah, Stevie, we’re doin’ okay. 

*

“Where was I before I was captured?” 

Sam looks up from his phone, eyes wide with surprise. Steve stares back at him, meeting his gaze. He’s been thinking about it for over an hour, and although he knows both Sam and Bucky were apart of his past, he can’t remember in what context. He knows it’s important. New memories are coming back every day, but they’re difficult to make sense of. 

“Uh, are you asking how you got captured?” Sam asks. 

Steve shakes his head. “I was here, wasn’t I? I lived here.” He’s sure of it. Sam and Bucky were here, too, filling up the space and making this home. 

“Yeah, you did. What made you remember that?” Sam prompts. Amina had told him and Bucky that it was best to let Steve remember things on his own, even though it made Steve itchy under the skin that everyone knew things about him that even he didn’t. He knew it was for the best, though. He’s accepted that he’s got a lot of holes in his brain. 

Steve shrugs. “The art. When - when I was in the bath,” Sam knows what he’s talking about, “I had been drawing. It matched the art on the walls. Most of the pictures were of you and Bucky.”

“Yeah, you drew us a lot,” Sam says, voice suspiciously thick. 

Steve narrows his eyes at him. “You were both important to me,” he murmurs. 

“You’re important to us, still,” Sam replies. Steve watches the tears well up and drip down Sam’s face, but he doesn’t comment on it. He watches Sam try and conceal the fact that he’s hurting, that he wants Steve to remember, that he  _ loves  _ Steve. He tries to conjure up the same emotion. It doesn’t work. 

*

“You fell.”

Bucky starts from where he’d been sprawled out on the carpet, stretching out after a long day doing whatever he does. Steve stares at him, eyes narrowed. Bucky meets his gaze, eyes soft. Steve suddenly focuses on Bucky’s metal arm (mark two, he tells him), grinds his teeth together. Bucky nods, looking old, looking tired. 

“I didn’t catch you,” Steve adds. 

Bucky shakes his head. “You would have been pulled with me,” he murmurs. “You did what you could.”

Steve looks away, out the window. “I let you fall,” he says, a terrified scream echoing in his ears. “Did they take me because you got out?”

Bucky flinches, eyes going wide. “Did they say that?” he demands.

“No. They said I was easier to subdue than the Asset. They said they should have taken me in the first place,” Steve tells him. 

Bucky sits up, jaw working. “Steve, they didn’t have the Chair until 1963. They spent the years before that trying other ways to get me to obey. After that - I went down far easier than you did,” he says. 

“The Chair makes it easier,” Steve murmurs, eyes dropping to his hands, clenched in his lap. 

Bucky makes a noise in the back of his throat. It almost sounds like an agreement. 

*

He has nightmares. Three months after he’s been brought home, Steve lays awake in his bed and stares at the ceiling, images racing through his mind. They’re not the images you’d think would be keeping him awake, after all that’s been done to him. They’re images of him in the battlefield, wrapped in blue, white and red. A symbol. A soldier. A puppet. 

He grits his teeth. The sun is rising. He breathes, like Amina tells him to. He focuses on the breaths, grounds himself using the sounds around him; the fridge in the kitchen, Bucky shifting in his bed through the wall, Sam shuffling to the lounge with his morning coffee. The TV switching on, quiet enough that normal ears wouldn’t pick up on it. 

He rolls out of bed, walks out to the lounge and hovers in the doorway. Sam’s on the couch, shoulders set in an exhausted line. Steve’s heart aches. He knows who he was to Sam, to Bucky. Knows the relationship he had with both of them. He doesn’t know if he could ever be like that again. Doesn’t know if he could ever be Steve again. 

“I’m Captain America,” Steve Rogers speaks up. 

Sam jumps, only just saving his coffee. He presses mute on the TV and turns around on the couch. Steve searches his face, remembers when Sam’s under eyes weren’t darker than the rest of his complexion, remembers when Sam would smile so wide when he saw Steve instead of this sad shadow of a smile he wears now. “You just remember that?” Sam asks. 

Steve nods, looking down. “I was dreaming about it,” he admits. 

“You remember much about it?” Sam prompts. 

Steve shakes his head, frowning. “Just the fighting. There was - there was lots of fighting,” he murmurs, looking back up and meeting Sam’s gaze. 

Sam just nods. Steve sighs, shuffling forwards and coming to stand at the window. The sun is peaking up over the horizon, beginning to bask the lounge in light. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Steve swallows, looking down at the carpet, at his bare feet. Soon, he will be drenched in sunlight and he will be warm and it will feel good. He remembers being drenched in blood on  _ so many  _ different occasions, remembers that warmth, remembers the bile it brought up his throat.

“I don’t want to be Captain America anymore,” he whispers. 


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a finale!!

There is an easel in the corner of the lounge, half-finished painting of the Brooklyn skyline decorating it. On the couch there is a pile of blankets, pillows and men. Two are asleep, soft snores filling the air. The other one is staring at the painting, eyes catching on little details the artist has spent a lot of time perfecting.

The smell of blood - sharp, metallic - can be found if he focuses, but he’s trying not to. The two men on his lap had gotten back from a mission four hours ago, managed to shower before crashing out on top of him. Their uniforms - modified a year ago - are hung up in the spare bedroom. 

It’s midday. The sun is hidden behind a thick layer of black clouds. Rain pelts against the windows, streaking down the glass and creating patterns. Steve’s been watching them for hours. The woods beyond the glass are quiet, as quiet as it gets. There’s no music playing in the apartment, which is rare. Steve doesn’t want to risk waking Sam or Bucky. 

He blinks, nice and slow. 

Over the past year and a half, since Steve was brought home, a lot of things have happened. The ‘original’ Captain America was pronounced legally dead. Steve Rogers spends his time creating art, helping Bucky maintain the land and the gardens around their patch of land. There are a lot of puppy piles, cuddling with Sam, Bucky and their dogs; Honey and Patches. 

Steve likes to sit at the kitchen bench and watch Sam cook, creating works of art that are their meals. He sometimes has days where he sits on the phone to his therapist, curled into a ball on the couch, shaking for hours on end. Sometimes he has days where he lays on the grass, sun beating down on his skin, Honey and Patches curled up beside him. Sometimes he has days where he, Sam and Bucky go for long walks through the woods, going hours without talking or hours without stopping for breath, laughter echoing through the trees. 

To his knowledge, most of Steve’s memories have come back. He remembers the way he, Sam and Bucky used to be; in a ‘v’ with Steve at the point. They’d  _ worked  _ that way, but now? They’re nothing more than a pile of boys in love. Steve loves it this way, how they fit seamlessly into each other, love shining from their pores. 

Nat says it’s disgusting, but the smile on her face while she says it proves otherwise. 

That’s another thing - Nat is apart of their weekly lives, dropping by for tea or coffee, tucking her feet up on the chair and resting her head on her knees. Steve knows they used to be close, but their dynamic now is touchy, like if one of them says something wrong it’ll all go down the drain. Nat keeps her distance and Steve keeps his. He knows she’s  _ seen  _ what happened to him; knows she erased all footage and evidence of it ever existing. She’d told him one night out on the porch when they were sipping green tea and watching Sam and Bucky run around after the dogs. 

However uncomfortable the situation made her, Nat stays a constant support. Steve knows she keeps her distance to take care of herself. He doesn’t resent her for it. 

Under his arm, Sam shifts in his sleep, warm breath gusting over Steve’s bicep as he sighs, making him shiver. Steve smiles down at him. Even in his sleep Sam’s constantly pulling Steve out of his own head, keeping him grounded and present. 

From the couch Steve can see the front yard and the driveway. He tries not to start at the sudden bark Patches lets out, instead focuses on the black-and-white blur of the dog as he races towards the approaching car. Honey is trotting along behind him, her shaggy yellow fur covered in dirt from where she and Patches have been playing in Bucky’s silverbeet patch -  _ again.  _

Bucky wakes up first, most likely sensing Steve’s unease and hearing Patches barking. He lifts his head, glaring blearily around the room before fixing his attention on the car. He grumbles something Steve doesn’t catch, sighing and burying his face into the crook of Steve’s arm. “Are we expecting anyone?” he mumbles. 

“No,” Steve replies, watching the car pull up alongside the porch. 

The windows are covered with sheer drapes, so whoever’s here won’t be able to see in. Steve still feels odd. This is their safe space - hardly anyone know it even exists, let alone that they’re here. That Steve’s  _ alive.  _ The car is discreet, though the windows are tinted and it’s difficult to see the person in the driver’s seat. There’s no one in the passenger side. 

When the car door opens and shuts, Bucky groans and slides off the couch, patting down his torso in an action of habit - checking if he has any weapons on him. Sam’s rousing now, breathing speeding up, so Steve waits on the couch for him to wake up. The person is decked in black; a hoodie and cargo pants and they walk like someone who’s been trained to walk that way. 

Bucky waits behind the door, watching them walk up the steps and come to stand still, hand raised to knock. Sam’s blinking away sleep when the person raps their knuckles against the wood. Bucky opens the door, the picture of calm, though he’s got a hand settled over the knife concealed under his shirt at his side. He’s never been able to go without a weapon on him, settling for a gun on the bedside table when Sam and Steve protested about the danger of keeping it under the pillow. 

“Fury,” Bucky greets, voice clearly miffed. 

Steve looks up from where he’s sharing a silent conversation with Sam, surprised. During all of this, none of them had once heard from Fury. “Sergeant Barnes,” Fury returns, voice pleasant enough but from the way Bucky’s spine is still rigid, Steve knows he sees something that conveys danger. 

“What brings you round these parts?” Bucky asks, body still blocking the entrance. 

Sam’s sitting up now, a frown on his face. Fury clears his throat, a gruff sound. “I heard there was a certain super-soldier taking a break from the field,” he says. 

Steve tenses up, sharing a look with Sam. Sam’s got fire in his eyes, anger clear in the line of his jaw. The muscle there is twitching as he grinds his teeth. Bucky scowls at Fury, hand tightening on the door handle. “You must have the wrong house. The only one ‘round here is fully retired,” he bites back.

“I have a proposition,” Fury continues, as if Bucky hadn’t spoken at all. 

Steve gets up and Sam follows him, catching his hand with his own and curling their fingers together. Bucky glances at them, pressing his lips into a thin line before stepping back to give them room. Steve comes to stand in front of Fury, angry that he would dare invade their peace like this. And that assume Steve would return to the field - like he owes them anything? He’s given enough. 

“Fury,” he greets his old boss, voice level even as he squeezes Sam’s hand harder for strength. 

Fury raises an eyebrow. “The world needs you again, Cap,” he says. 

“No, it doesn’t.” Steve sighs, long and weary. “I’m not coming back. Haven’t you heard? Captain America’s dead. There’s people in his place, now. Maybe you should contact them,” he suggests. He can  _ feel  _ Bucky and Sam’s pride shining from either side and it warms him, keeps him upright. He’s quivering, just slightly. 

Fury has the gall to look surprised. “Maybe I should,” he drawls, taking a moment to glance around their home, gaze lingering on Honey and Patches, who are sitting on the porch, watching the stranger. 

Steve nods, taking a step back. “Have a safe trip,” he says, managing to hold Fury’s gaze. 

Fury takes his time, searching Steve’s eyes like he’s going to find something there that will answer his questions he’s clearly burning with. Instead of voicing them, he too takes a step back, giving them all a nod. “I’ll leave some flowers on your grave,” he parts with, before turning his back to them and walking back to his car. 

Bucky shuts the door when Steve finds he can’t move. His boys guide him back over to the couch, get him sat down and talk to him in comforting voices;  _ ‘You’re doin so good, Stevie, you did so good, you don’t ever have to back if you don’t want, we love you.’  _ He hears it all through the ringing in his ears, tries to focus on that rather than the fluttering panic in his chest and the way his eyes won’t focus. 

It takes a while, but when he calms down enough to concentrate on the way he’s cuddled up in both Sam and Bucky’s arms, he’s exhausted. He tilts his head to look at Sam, who’s head is on his thigh. He can feel Bucky’s chin resting on top of his head. He shudders, lets all the tension seep out of him in a way that leaves him soft and floppy. 

“You back with us, Stevie?” Bucky asks, flesh hand coming around to rest on his forearm. 

Steve hums, relaxing back into Bucky’s chest. Sam’s hands - one on his hip, one on his knee - squeeze gently, a comforting gesture and Steve makes a reassuring noise in the back of his throat. “You wanna get into bed early?” Sam proposes, cheek shifting on Steve’s thigh as he looks up. 

Steve blinks down at him, feeling like he’s been hit by a truck. He nods and Bucky moves immediately, slow enough so Steve’s prepared, scooping him up in his arms. Sam walks along beside them, shoulder bumping against Bucky’s, holding one of Steve’s hands. Steve almost wants to protest at being coddled, but honestly? He just lets that urge evaporate and presses his face into Bucky’s chest, breathing in his scent. 

They’re wearing comfortable clothes already, so all three of them slide under the covers, Steve warm and safe in the middle. Sam and Bucky keep their arms flung over Steve’s middle, pulling themselves close to him and comforting Steve at the same time they’re reassuring themselves that he’s safe. That he’s okay. That he’s home. 

Tomorrow, the veggie gardens are going to be weeded and tended to after Bucky’s morning walk in the woods. The dogs will wake Sam and Steve up demanding to be fed, then Steve will help Sam make a massive breakfast for the three of them. When it’s nearly ready to be plated up, Steve will take a mug of coffee out to Bucky and bring him inside to they can eat together at the dining table. The dogs will lay at their feet, chomping down scraps of food the three boyfriends simply can’t resist sparing for their babies. 

The day will drag on, but in a warm and languid way, minutes filled and passed by things all three of them love doing - Bucky’s gardens, Steve’s painting, Sam’s reading and the lunch he’ll cook. They’ll orbit around each other, gravitate towards the others every half hour to check up on them, press kisses into their skin and share a few words before drifting away again. 

Steve will hit a block in his painting and go outside to find Bucky and Sam pulling at weeds around the silverbeet, discussing what peppers and chillies Bucky should grow during the coming season. He’ll flop down at the edge of the garden, fingers running through Honey and Patch’s fur, scratching at the top of their heads and behind their ears. Evening will crawl across the sky, turning it pink. The five of them will turn in, curling up on the couch again. Maybe they’ll decide to move to the deck, blankets around their shoulders. They might all cook dinner, they might warm up some leftovers. 

Bucky or Sam will be called for duty in a few weeks, but until then they won’t be disturbed. They will be granted years of peace to come. Years to heal, years to live and years to love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for all ur comments and kudos i love u all

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on tumblr at [buckyskillingme](http://buckyskillingme.tumblr.com) to throw questions/headcannons/screaming at me in my ask box.


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